Last weekend at last saw some sky conditions that allowed observing at the local club's darker site. I took that opportunity to tote my 15-inch along and put the new Sky Commander dightal setting circles to the test on a moving target and Comet Hergenrother was a perfect candidate. Sure enough, the Sky Commanders guided me right to it, whereupon I made this sketch with an 8.8mm Explore Scientific 82 degree eyepiece which yields 227X. Sky conditions were mediocre, but good enough to show the comet resembled a flame from a cutting torch like the ones I used to cut steel at a local shipyard. A bright, nearly starlike inner core where the nucleus is was also apparent. I scanned the drawing and cleaned it up with Abobe Photoshop. Its small size and nicely concentrated light made it very easy to find even from home, a nice warm up for the apparently great comet of the early 21rst century coming next year.

Very nice. I could not see so much tail in a 10 inch in dark skies last week. It is a very interesting comet, to be such a little and dim thing, yet easy to see. Very condensed, and almost like one of the pieces of Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 looked in 2006. Nice Job. GW

Thanks everyone for the thumbs up, I'm glad you guys liked the sketch. It seems the comet is fading rapidly, the last time I searched for it with a 10-inch from home, I failed to find it. I'm going to try again tonight to see if it's still at all visible from my driveway. If it remains unseen through the 15-inch, then it's clearly returning to it's normal extreme faintness.

They most definitely are, doubly so when one considers their price point versus Televue and other high end eyepieces. They don't give up very much to them, at a price point many folks can afford. I just don't see spending 600 dollars and up for one eyepiece in my future, I can buy a very good telescope for that amount. Thanks for your thumbs up on the sketch too.